tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17688375960657763642018-05-22T09:02:41.067+01:00Wonderman Diaries(I'm not really a wonderman - I'm just a man who wonders.)Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.comBlogger378125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-28507098323805615912018-05-19T08:40:00.000+01:002018-05-19T08:40:57.068+01:00Touristi<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">I have just returned to base-camp after three weeks of touring Sicily and, even as I digest the experience, I have a hunger for more travelling. The next trip, however, will be within the UK and will include a sea crossing to the Orkney Isles. This means that I will have to take with me more than the shorts, sandals and lightweight shirts that sufficed for the Mediterranean. Prudent tourists in Britain must be prepared to dress for a variety of climatic conditions.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Whatever we wear and wherever we are, however, we always stand out to the locals. We may shun brightly coloured leisure clothes, cagoules and funny hats; we may even hide our maps and guide books; we might discard our backpacks, shoulder bags and (worst of all) bum bags but they will still recognise us – fish out of water, fair game. The natives of Devon and Cornwall used to call us “grockles” – perhaps they still do – a name that has a whiff of contempt about it. But who can blame them? A once proud community of seafarers, miners and farmers, reduced to the ignoble roles of providing B&amp;B, cream teas and boat trips to spy on seals might well feel resentment. Then there is the invading army of second-homers that has exiled their children – but that is another chapter in the story.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The business of tourism certainly provides an income for locals but, if over-exploited, it can destroy the attractions that created it in the first place. Destinations that rely on the appeal of beautiful landscapes, historical buildings or quaint cottage industries must safeguard the integrity of such assets or risk losing their customers. Some of the places we visited in Sicily balance on the knife-edge of this dilemma but we also spent time in ordinary, every-day places, where life goes on without tourism. Milazzo, for example, is a port from which tourists catch ferries to Lipari and the other Islands. We stayed there for a week and soon learned to avoid the area around the port if we wanted to buy anything. Just a few streets back, where tourists do not venture, we could pay local prices – our presence an unexpected curiosity, not an opportunity to overcharge.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">One morning, we screwed up our courage to buy from a traditional looking fishmonger’s shop. On the counter was the head of a swordfish, displayed vertically so that its “sword” pointed a metre into the air: behind it was a massive chunk of its torso and, next to that, a large slab of tuna. It was clearly a family concern, the labour divided so that the husband wielded a very sharp set of knives to cut the portions, while the wife took care of the wrapping and payment side of things. On the walls above were images of the Virgin Mary, Jesus and assorted angels, all of whom looked down upon us to ensure an honest, Christian transaction with no cheating or extortion. And lo, it came to pass that we had a delicious, reasonably priced supper of tuna steaks that evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The contrast with a mainstream touristic experience was to follow: we went to Taormina. The old town is certainly cute and unspoiled but the retail outlets are exclusively devoted to serving the tourists who throng the streets in search of what I am not sure, though there is a spectacular Greek theatre on the edge of town. We soon left the crowds to seek the house where D.H. Lawrence lived for a while and Casa Cuseni, the villa saved by another Brit, Daphne Phelps. Both locations were deserted. Likewise, in Lipari, the quaintly winding streets were the main attraction and, after a short while, we found interest in the archaeology museum, along with a few Germans who struggled to translate the captions.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Before leaving, we had a drink at a cafe. When I asked our waiter for the bill, he went to get it from the till and I distinctly heard the cashier ask him <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Touristi?”</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>We were charged accordingly.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-17062163466461731362018-05-12T06:55:00.001+01:002018-05-12T06:55:44.216+01:00The Tourism Industry<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,sans-serif;">At the ticket office of Palermo’s Archaeology Museum, the attractive, engaging young woman at the desk mistook us for French and addressed us accordingly. Perhaps she was misled by some detail of our dress, which is not quite as M&amp;S as might be expected of British cultural tourists of a certain age. However, my partner, who fantasises about being of more exotic extraction than she actually is, was flattered anyway. Having expected to converse in either Italian or English, I was momentarily thrown and responded with some stuttered Franglais. The charming lady soon had us sussed and switched effortlessly to fluent English. She explained – after we had paid the entrance fee – that the two upper floors of the museum were closed for restoration (our guide book had predicted, hopefully, that the work would be complete by 2016) but not to worry, the most important treasures were all on display. I thanked her, in what I hoped was confidently spoken Italian, determined to salvage some dignity since I felt we had been outed as regular, monolingual Brits masquerading as continental polyglots.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,sans-serif;">The economy of Sicily depends heavily on tourism, yet there appears to be scant public investment in the business. While private enterprise exploits every opportunity to operate bars, cafes and souvenir shops at all the catchment points, officially operated facilities are minimal. The Valley of the Temples, for example, attracts 600,000 visitors each year yet, when we visited, the queue for tickets was 45 minutes long and there was just one toilet – attended by a chap who expected a tip. What becomes of all the entry fees? Sicily’s archaeological sites generally are unkempt and devoid of wardens to safeguard them. Likewise, some of the palazzi, though stuffed with ornaments, furniture, paintings and other objects, have few, if any, curators to dissuade thieves and vandals. In one such palazzo there is a bedstead, supposedly slept on by Garibaldi, with a makeshift “Do Not Touch” sign hung on its headboard. I stroked it anyway, just to make my point.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,sans-serif;">The paucity of investment in the heritage business reflects a more general observation: that while there is much private wealth, public squalor is everywhere evident. Country roads are dangerously eroded, but tattered tape and faded warning signs remain in place of the repairs that ought to have been made long ago. Lay-bys and lanes are treated as drive-by rubbish dumps. Public beaches and urban spaces are similarly scattered with garbage, while, alongside them, private lidos and terraces are lovingly tended. And on this island, the contrast between public poverty and private wealth feels ironic considering its archaeology, which evidences a tradition of public splendour in the ancient temples, amphitheatres and fortifications.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,sans-serif;">While Sicily’s governing body lacks either the will or the means to invest in its tourist infrastructure, it does have an organisation that could, if it chose, help to sort it out. I refer to the Mafia, a collective that amasses vast amounts of illegally acquired money, much of which could be invested in the legitimate growth-industry of tourism instead of being furtively laundered. Furthermore, the Mafia has considerable business and organisational skills and, assuming that its business goal is profit, it should have no objection to taking on the job. It is said* that the American branch of the Sicilian Mafia ceded the heroin trade to the Sicilians in the 1980s, with the result that Naples, for example, was ruined, its traditional economy and family structures laid waste by addiction: surely it is time for a corporate social responsibility makeover?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,sans-serif;">We are currently in Milazzo, where the heights are dominated by an enormous complex of defensive walls and towers, founded by the Arabs, and added to by every subsequent invader. When we visited, we found the ticket office staffed by a lady who took the fee, a man who tore off the tickets and several hangers-on. One them greeted us with a grin and a torrent of Italian, the gist of which was are you Germans? “No,” I said, “Inglesi.” She smiled and said welcome, then gave us an old brochure translated into German. It was all she had.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,sans-serif;">*Peter Robb:<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Midnight in Sicily</i></span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-703157579976791202018-05-05T06:57:00.001+01:002018-05-05T06:57:51.074+01:00City Living, Past, Present & Future<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">I love predictive text: the algorithm on my phone has taught it to anticipate my words, thereby saving me the tiresome task of typing my full name and lots of other obvious stuff besides. However, I am not sure when or how it learnt to suggest the word ‘Richard’ after ‘cliff’. It’s not as if I’m a fan. The place we are staying in overlooks a flat roof where a family of seagulls has nested and, while watching the youngsters stretching their wings, I typed a note into my phone thus: “Are seagulls aware of the difference between a parapet and a cliff <s>Richard</s>edge?” Whether they are or not is of academic interest, since it is apparent that seagulls do not care. However, without the building (there being no cliffs in the vicinity) there would be no nest.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">The appropriation of our buildings by wild creatures is an unintended consequence of urbanisation – a subject that currently fascinates me. I am staying in the Sicilian fishing port of Sciacca, which is halfway between two of the Mediterranean’s most significant and extensive archaeological sites – the Valley of the Temples to the east and Selinunte to the west – both of which were founded by the Greeks between 600 and 400 BC. The Valley of the Temples is actually a misleading description, since the temples themselves sit high on a ridge, where they were visible to sailors from the sea; but the city they served, Akragas, on the slopes of said valley, was once the fourth largest in the world. Nothing remains of it, save the outline of a few streets, whereas the main temple, Concordia, has survived almost intact. Likewise, at Selinunte, the city of Selinos boasted 100,000 inhabitants and was, at its peak, one of the richest and most powerful cities in the known world. All that stands above ground now is a fragment of a temple (reconstructed in 1958) and parts of its defensive walls. There is also a musealisation (a novel word for my algorithm) of a religious sanctuary. A musealisation is an arrangement of ancient stones set out by archaeologists in an interpretation of what might have been there. I would have liked to see a musealisation of an ordinary, humble dwelling but perhaps that is deemed too mundane to draw the crowds.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y1KVRPtyrzM/WuyKvdRi3QI/AAAAAAAAAf4/uNxkj1Y_5xElQQInJ9yNIjcCFTlbt-vvACLcBGAs/s1600/Selinunte.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y1KVRPtyrzM/WuyKvdRi3QI/AAAAAAAAAf4/uNxkj1Y_5xElQQInJ9yNIjcCFTlbt-vvACLcBGAs/s320/Selinunte.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">It seems that these ruined cities were victims of their own success, sacked by covetous invaders, though it is true that earthquakes, the silting-up of ports et cetera also contributed to their downfall. On a less epic historical scale, the modern, hill-top town of Favara (near the site of Akragas), whilst never in danger of being sacked, did suffer economic decline in the latter part of the 20<sup>th</sup> century – a common fate of towns dependent on industries that disappear. Two of its residents, however, aim to kick-start a renaissance. They have bought a block of run-down dwellings in the centre and turned it into an arts-cum-creative complex which hosts events, exhibitions and workshops. The morning that I visited, there were just a few other tourists but, by lunchtime, the place was overrun by boisterous Italian families (it was a public holiday), which may be evidence that their plan is working.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">The main exhibition there featured the work of Japanese architects who are preoccupied with resolving a particular problem of urban living: lack of affordable space for housing, especially for singles. Miniaturisation is one solution, but it comes at the cost of social isolation so, to counter this, they are experimenting with purpose-built shared houses which minimise bedrooms but make the most of communal spaces to encourage sociability and creativity. It may be reminiscent of student accommodation but they are optimistic for its future. They have even coined a word for their vision of modern urban living – “co-dividuality”. It’s an adventurous concept but my algorithm just cannot get the hang of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-91061604531659653842018-04-28T07:44:00.000+01:002018-04-28T09:12:17.885+01:00SA - Sicily Again<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">My partner rises early to go running or to workout at the gym and, when she returns, I get up. Am I lazy? I think not: I just do not feel the necessity to indulge in extremes of physical exertion to keep fit. Nor am I alone in this belief. Recent “research” confirms that there is an alternative to HII – or High Intensity Interval training. It is called LISS – Low Intensity Steady State training - and it comprises simple, everyday activities such as getting up, yawning, stretching one’s limbs and going for a walk. It works well, so long as you do enough of it. Of course, I suspected all along that this was the case – my own “research” had always tended to verify it – which is why I had no compunction last Sunday about spending the afternoon at the cinema, watching three films consecutively. I had, after all, walked there. Besides, it was the last opportunity to catch the new releases before flying off the next day to spend a few weeks in Sicily.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">We have been to Sicily before but, because it is a big island, full of historical interest, we are back to visit the places we missed last time. The flight was fun, being packed with noisy, excited Italians who, when we touched down in Catania, burst into applause and song. However, it was past our bedtime when the girl at the car-hire counter began hectoring us into paying extra for insurance we probably don’t need. We signed up anyway, eager to get our heads down in the nearest hotel and, when she had triumphed, she switched to friendly mode. She revealed that she had until recently lived in Manchester, where she waitressed at our favourite local Italian restaurant. We took her photo and promised to hug the proprietor for her on our return. We drove half a kilometre from the airport, where I scraped the car bumper trying to park in a tight space, then slept fitfully amid dreams concerning car-insurance claims.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">Things looked brighter after breakfast, as they often do. The sun shone, and the temperature quickly reached 25 degrees – and this is just springtime. We drove inland to visit the remains of Villa Romana del Casale, a former palace of imperial standing. Though there is not much left of the buildings, the extensive mosaic floors are in a good state of preservation thanks to a landslide in the 12<sup>th</sup> century which covered them over for 700 years. Excavation in the 1950s revealed remarkable work, famed for its narrative style, complexity, colour and extent. A few hours later we arrived at the fishing port of Sciacca, where we have rented a flat with a terrace overlooking the harbour, and did what one does on terraces – relaxed with a drink while watching the sun go down.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">The next morning, we strolled out for coffee to the main piazza, where there were rows of gleaming, vintage Fiat 500s lined up for all to admire. They really are so cute that it is impossible not to want one. We realised that we were, of course, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>in the midst of a club rally, though surprised it was happening on a Wednesday. Only later did we discover that it was actually a full-blown <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">festa</i> day and that all the shops were closed for the celebration of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">San Fiat dei Cinquecenti</i>. Still, shopping was low on the priority list, way below getting one’s bearings.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">Later, I joined the early evening <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">passegiata</i> along the section of promenade recently restored with funds provided by the EU (or ‘us’ as Brexiteers may prefer to think of it) and finally, exhausted by my efforts, I sat at a pavement café and drank a foreign beer – which was not too bad, actually. I looked out at the sea and contemplated the state of my fitness regime, which I now see as morphing into BLISS – Bloody Low Intensity Steady State. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br />Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-73949781905781995862018-04-20T20:48:00.002+01:002018-04-21T08:48:09.733+01:00Lifestyle Challenge<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The sudden transition from cold weather to hot this week prompted a hasty reassessment of my wardrobe – including bedding and pyjamas. A good night’s sleep is dependent on many factors, some of which are psychological and difficult if not impossible to control. But the physical ones can be addressed and so I went shopping for cooler pyjamas. I could have gone online but, when it comes to clothing, I prefer to feel the quality before buying and, fortunately, there are still some shops in town despite Amazon. Gents’ outfitters have long since been incorporated into big department stores, where pyjamas may be found in the “sleepwear” section. Sleepwear, these days, covers a wide range of options, so it took a while before I decided on the (for me) radical choice of cotton shorts. In and of themselves, they will not guarantee a good night’s sleep, though the promise is seductive.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Sometimes sleep comes effortlessly, especially when unscheduled. This happened the other evening while I sat watching an episode of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Civilisations</i>on TV. The last thing I remember is seeing huge statues of Egyptian pharaohs – selfies in stone – and contemplating a celebration of the fact that the smart-phone has finally brought egalitarianism to the art of self-promotion. When I awoke, another programme had begun and I had pins-and-needles in one arm. I retired to bed, where I spent the next two hours trying to induce a return to slumber, during which time I tried not to fret, for fretting about sleeplessness, as we all know, only exacerbates the problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">As with sleep, so with wakefulness: you make all the preparations you can to create your ideal conditions but a positive, happy result cannot be guaranteed. “Life,” as they say,” is what happens to you when you are busy making plans” and it is sometimes advisable, therefore, to go with the flow. Nobody, however, can be fully prepared for the unexpected, as is illustrated by a certain news story I picked up. A householder came home to find an intruder taking a bath in his tub, cocktail in hand. He called the police, who arrived in time to apprehend the naked, fleeing bather, saying afterwards “the man’s safeguarding needs were addressed.” Just how the householder reacted subsequently, one can only guess: I suppose he fitted extra security locks to the premises but it would have been heartening to learn that his experience had led him to a different conclusion and that he had decided to hold regular ‘open bath’ days to celebrate the occurrence. Naturally, prudence would require that he make some sort of identity check prior to admitting strangers but bath nights could be a fun way to meet new people. He could even extend them to friends, instigating an evening of socialising, Finnish style, but without going to the expense of installing a sauna.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Such a course of action might be held up as an example of questioning the assumptions and habits upon which one’s lifestyle is founded. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>Experimenting in this manner is a healthy exercise in combating complacency and encouraging the spirit of empathy in the interest of social harmony. Some of us are keen to challenge ourselves in this way in order to jolt our systems, get out of a rut, or simply test our capabilities. However, I would not include bungee-jumping or other forms of extreme physical activity, as these fall more into the category of ‘gambling with death’, where the reward for winning is euphoria and the ultimate adrenaline buzz requires an ever-escalating stake. No. What I have in mind is a more cerebral kind of challenge: ordering something new in a restaurant; visiting an unfamiliar place, where everyone but you has a weird haircut; or diversifying into a new style of sleepwear, for example.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><br /></div><br />Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-91188855928761122842018-04-14T08:23:00.000+01:002018-04-14T08:23:56.924+01:00Keep on Joining the Dots<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">On just my second day away from home last week, I was puzzled by the disappearance of my change of underwear. Certain that I had packed it, I made an extensive but fruitless search of the rooms, concluding that I must have inadvertently recycled it with the previous evening’s bottles – or something. Still, apart from a spot of unscheduled laundry and shopping, the loss did not disrupt my plans unduly.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">I was keen to see the exhibition <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/charmed_lives_in_greece.aspx"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Charmed Lives in Greece</span></i></a> at the British Museum so that I could ‘join up the dots’ that connect the writer Patrick Leigh Fermor with the artists John Craxton and Nikos Ghika. While in Athens a couple of years ago, I had been enchanted by Ghika’s town house – now a museum – that is full of art and memorabilia from post-war Greece. Fermor and Craxton featured among the exhibits but I did not then appreciate the extent of the connection between the three. My appetite having been whetted in Greece, this exhibition presented an opportunity to find out more. But I have a self-imposed limit when it comes to amassing information on any one subject, since my aspiration is not to become an amateur specialist in just a few fields, but to make connections with as many strands of history as I can. This is an ambition that can easily get out of hand though, since the scope is enormous. Sometimes, friends look nervous when I launch into a “Did you know?” – as in, for example, “that Maida Vale in London was named after the Sicilian village of Maida where, in 1806 General Stuart’s British force beat<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>the French? And there was, until recently, a pub called the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hero of Maida</i>with Stuart’s portrait on the sign?” (I am reading a history of Sicily because I plan to go there soon.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Sometimes, however, it is refreshing to know nothing. When, days later, I went for the first time to the Hertfordshire town of Ware (for a family birthday celebration) nothing connected it to anything I knew – although its name always reminded me of a childhood sweetheart called Christine Ware. Arriving early, I poked my nose into the town’s museum, where civic pride in its history as “one of the oldest, continuously occupied sites in Europe” was evident. As I scanned the captions, I half hoped to see a mention of the Ware family but there was nothing. The only connection – and a tenuous one at that – is the Roman road, Ermine Street, which runs through Ware and up to Lincolnshire, where my courtship of Christine was conducted on the playground swings of our innocence.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The acquisition of facts in this age of information is easy. So easy, in fact, that the quantity we can amass threatens to outstrip our ability to process it. How much capacity do our brains have? Until recently, it was supposed that older people’s brains were unable to create new cells. Latest research, however, indicates that this is not necessarily so, as long as the person is fit and healthy in mind and body. Despite this, we all have limited life spans and are unlikely ever to match, say, Facebook algorithms’ ability to make zillions of connections between zillions of scraps of knowledge. Not that FB’s conclusions can be relied upon: there is no way, for example, that I can be persuaded to pay £70 for a pair of poncey slippers. On the other hand, there is a possibility that it could put me back in touch with Christine.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">But that is mere fantasy. What I really want is for my brain to continue making new cells, especially since, when I got home yesterday, I found that my underwear had never left its drawer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-21584805911023848562018-04-07T07:26:00.000+01:002018-04-07T07:26:25.750+01:00Look Back in Moderation<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">“When you re-read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in yourself than there was before.”</span></i><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;"> The editor and critic Clifton Fadiman wrote these words and, when I contemplate them, I am inclined to agree. However, there are so many classics out there that there arises a question of practicality. Who has the time for re-reading? It takes me seven days just to get through the weekend’s newspapers – and I don’t even glance at the sports sections. Perhaps I could streamline the process by limiting consumption of Brexit-related articles and developing a speed-reading technique but, even so, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">War and Peace</i> would still be years away from a re-read. (In fact, it is so long since the first read, I can barely recall whether it merits a re-read). Moreover, if you apply the principle of re-visiting classics not only to books but also to other creative works – films, paintings, plays, operas and all kinds of music, the pressure on one’s time is compounded.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">To a limited extent, you can save time by listening to recordings. Audio books, poems, plays and music may be appreciated while driving or doing the ironing: effective time-management for the consumption of culture. The same does not apply, however, for films and art exhibitions. Arguably, you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">can</i> watch a film while ironing, though the dangers are apparent: you may miss a crucial shot while perfecting a trouser-crease and/or catch an exquisitely framed sequence while scorching a favourite garment. I have never yet seen anyone ironing in an art gallery, though I did once watch a lady ironing on Trafalgar Square’s “fourth plinth” as part of a public-participation-in-art event.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Moreover, shortage of time compounds even further if you consume music accompanied by video footage. The simultaneous engagement of ears and eyes excludes listening as an accompaniment to practical tasks. In extreme circumstances, you could be fully occupied watching YouTube for the rest of your life. I have developed something of a penchant myself, while finishing the last of the evening’s tipple, for trawling YouTube for classics such as Joni Mitchell performing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Both Sides Now</i>, only to find that an hour has slipped away in the pursuit of inferior cover versions subsequently suggested to me by the smart-arse algorithm. Let’s face it: there has to be a limit on the amount of time one spends re-visiting the classics. Apart from time being precious, there is another, important consideration: how do you keep abreast of the classics that are currently being produced if you are forever harking back to golden oldies?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Besides, what actually constitutes a classic? I suppose that the likes of Clifton Fadiman would be qualified to compile a scholarly list but, when it comes down to it, one has to choose for oneself. A lot depends on the impression the work makes in the first instance. Yesterday, I went to see the 1958 film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Look Back in Anger</i>. It wasn’t a re-visit – I had never seen it – but I had seen the famous play on which it was based and, more significantly, I had acted one of the parts in an am-dram production. The work qualifies, therefore, as a classic on my list.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">I should explain that my acting career was very short – lasting only one term of my fresher year at university – and that I was cast as Cliff, the genial one, not Jimmy, the angry one. At the time, I did not understand why Jimmy was so unreasonably angry – after all, he had the girl, didn’t he? But what I didn’t know back then was that not everyone has had a happy, contented childhood and, consequently, little reason to be angry.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-42703225467244200082018-03-31T08:26:00.000+01:002018-03-31T08:26:38.983+01:00The Return of Medieval<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Walking to the station one afternoon, I passed the office block where, on the pavement, sheltering under an overhang, a man had been living in a tent for several weeks. Now, however, he was striking camp. The street-team had thrown his tent on to a refuse lorry and were scrubbing the pitch clean. Meanwhile, he was being led away by a police woman and several social workers (as I assumed them to be). Further on, I passed other street-dwellers, all in their usual places and untroubled by eviction – perhaps because they inhabit sleeping bags and are therefore not in contravention of town-planning byelaws applicable to tents. Dealing with homeless people is, I am sure, complex – as are the circumstances of their plight.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">I was on my way to York to attend a friend’s* book launch and, while there, take in some of the tourist attractions. It was my first time in York, yet I was not surprised to find the same degree of vagrancy on the short walk from station to centre as there exists in other cities. One law of economics is universal: if you are begging, then you must site yourself in the midst of the maximum number of potential donors, especially nowadays, in the light of at least three developments. The first is that fewer people carry cash in their pockets; the second is that people are experiencing compassion fatigue; the third is that donors are increasingly persuaded by the argument that giving money to individuals merely buys their next drug fix, whereas funding registered charities is more likely to help in their rehabilitation. This latter I subscribe to, though I am convinced that vagrancy can only be eradicated by re-balancing our socio-political system. I am working on that.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The day after the launch party, I took a walk along the city wall to get a feel for the antiquity of York. I also visited some ancient buildings, among them the small church of All Saints, where the medieval stained glass windows are not only remarkable but also very accessible, being at shoulder-height. One of them, (pictured) from 1410, depicts a man in ‘eyewear’ that might be fashionable in hipster circles today. But it was the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall that really interested me because of its continuity (it is still owned and used by the society that founded it in 1357) and the fact that part of its original function was to provide respite for the destitute at a time when government was not concerned with such issues. There is much more to see in York, of course, but I ran out of time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aBCQ_wdXkhE/Wr4viKyCTfI/AAAAAAAAAeo/uuRhuBiAM-8XKVUgNmQ9hxR4rhXRLPBFgCLcBGAs/s1600/20180323_153301.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="618" data-original-width="928" height="212" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aBCQ_wdXkhE/Wr4viKyCTfI/AAAAAAAAAeo/uuRhuBiAM-8XKVUgNmQ9hxR4rhXRLPBFgCLcBGAs/s320/20180323_153301.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Back at Manchester Piccadilly, I encountered a scruffy-looking man dragging a reluctant creature on a leash. “Is that a ferret?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied but, as he was about to warm to conversation, I caught a whiff of a pungent odour which deterred me from getting closer. In fact, it put me in mind of medieval hygiene. I left him and his pet – which was struggling to propel itself along the slippery tiles. Although the smell of ferrets can be very unpleasant, there are ways of minimising it. This man evidently had made no effort to do so. In fact, he had even acquired it himself. Outside the station, the street-dwelling vagrants awaited and, swathed as they are in grubby blankets and sleeping bags, they added to my impression that I had slipped into a medieval time warp. Overall, I am sure that the human condition has improved with the progress of civilisation, though by Samuel Johnson’s measure – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation</i>” – that progress has surely stalled in recent years.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">* <a href="http://www.valleypressuk.com/book/103/riverain">Robert Powell</a><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br />Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-59976318483245693312018-03-24T09:12:00.002+00:002018-03-24T09:12:54.920+00:00Knock Knock. Who'sThere?<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">What an enigma is Russia! Despite a political history that appears to have been characterised by brutal repression, corruption and militarism it has been – and still is – a breeding ground of massive talents in the arts, literature, music, philosophy and science. How can that be? And how is one supposed to come up with a popular characterisation of your stereotypical Russian? Are they cultured sophisticates who have shaped Western European arts and sciences? Are they vodka-swilling brutes, lost in a sea of nostalgic yearning for the Soviet era? Are they oppressed victims of a succession of callous political systems, inured to hardship, imbued with cynicism and devoid of hope? The fact that stereotyping the people of a nation is a lazy route to superficiality has never prevented us doing so, but with Russians, it seems particularly tricky. I know only one Russian personally – a young academic who has a winning smile, a sense of humour and a love of classical music. She has lived and worked in England long enough to be comfortable with both the language and the people – so much so that, when I told her she didn’t seem very Russian, she replied in an accent chillingly reminiscent of that Cold War character Olga, the nasty piece of work in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">From Russia with Love</i>, “I can do if you want.” Therefore, based on my sample of one, I conclude that Russians are not easy to characterise.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Nevertheless, Putin’s henchmen are doing quite a good job of reinforcing the “nasty” image just now, sending heavies over here to bump off their surplus-to-requirements citizens, then claiming it has nothing to do with them. (Their assertion that the British Secret Service is to blame might just wash in a ‘spy-counter-spy’ scenario but having just witnessed Putin’s pretence of a democratic election, it is more likely that his regime blames the West in order to bolster its ‘strong leadership’ credentials at home.) Whilst it may be beneficial to London’s economy to have Russian oligarchs spending loads of money in the retail sector and lining the pockets of British lawyers with their endless ownership squabbles, we really must insist that they moderate their gangsterish tendencies, at least while guests in our relatively law-abiding country.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The question is how can we insist? Fighting talk of Britain “punching above its weight” is jingoistic, nostalgic nonsense. We moved into the lightweight category soon after WWII, where we have languished – resentfully – ever since. When faced with a powerful adversary, it is useful to cultivate powerful allies – regardless of their moral credentials – and it is with this pragmatic approach that British politics proceeds. Of course, diplomacy is always to be preferred to conflict but in this instance, diplomacy has hit a couple of obstacles. One is Russian insistence that the West is out to do them down. The other is Boris Johnson. Notwithstanding there has been a tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats, this has achieved nothing so it may be time to adopt subtler tactics such as, for example, those employed in the latest spat between India and Pakistan.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The Indian deputy high commissioner in Islamabad recently complained that he was awoken at 03.00 when someone rang his doorbell and ran off. He insisted it was Pakistan security agents. A few days later, the Pakistani deputy high commissioner in New Delhi was awoken at 03.00 by an identical doorbell-ring-and-run incident. It was, he claimed, an act of retaliation. Now, this kind of low-level tit-for-tat diplomatic activity has its advantages. For one, it is a lot cheaper than expulsions, though just as effective. For another, it is well within the capabilities of Boris, a man well qualified to be leader of a doorbell-ring-and-run gang: we may be confident that he has at least some understanding of what the job entails. Furthermore, the Russians will be extremely annoyed, as it is well known they have no sense of humour. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br />Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-2265999503758224782018-03-17T08:47:00.002+00:002018-03-17T08:47:33.778+00:00Only Nine Months to Go!<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The end of the world is nigh again. I saw the notification, outside Pret a Manger, by Victoria Station, written in black felt-tip on two sheets of cardboard propped against a wall. The sentences were ungrammatical, written more like a mood-poem with words like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lord Jesus, final judgement, angels, fire, destroy</i>, etc. However, it conveyed its message effectively and was unequivocal about the date: December 2018. The presumed author and wild-haired prophet of doom sat at a nearby pavement table, a camouflage-print survivalist rucksack and a freebie golfing umbrella at his feet. He was nursing a Pret beverage and studying a copy of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Metro</i>. Just why he would bother reading about news and current affairs is a mystery, considering that soon they will cease to be. I watched him through the window while I sipped my coffee. Was he was taking a well-earned break from proselytising, or just idly passing the time ‘til December? Whichever, he was making very little impact on his target audience. One person did stop to read the notices, a middle-aged woman carrying shopping bags, but then she glanced disdainfully at the off-duty prophet and plodded on, shaking her head.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">I certainly hope the world will not end that soon – there is so much I would like to do that I can’t fit it all into the next nine months – but if it does, it will certainly not be the work of an avenging god and his cohorts of angels. If there were a god, why would he go to all the trouble of creating disobedient humans only to destroy them when they proved to be disobedient? In any case, would he do it just before his son’s birthday? I don’t think so. More likely, if the end comes at all, it will be because of the falling-out of two pumped-up egotists with eccentric hairstyles and itchy trigger-fingers. Still, it got me thinking that I should draw up a list of priorities to allow for life’s shorter-than-expected span. I could make a start by getting up earlier, then eliminating every moment of downtime from my daily schedule e.g. staring into space or watching property-porn on TV. Then I could pick off other pointless activities, such as going to the gym: fitness will not be advantageous in the event of one’s imminent and inevitable demise.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">I finished my coffee and, with a renewed sense of urgency, went to catch my train for Margate, one of the places I have been curious to visit – but only since it got its new art gallery, the Turner Contemporary. Margate is one of many seaside resorts that lost its appeal when holidays in Spain became popular. The town’s investment in a ‘destination’ gallery aims to compensate for that loss of trade. I certainly hope it works although, like the Council’s other major developments in recent times – the civic centre, the tower of flats, the shopping centre – it is an ugly brute of a building in a very prominent position. The magic only happens when you step inside: the windows face the sea, so that the marring of Margate, be it new and overbearing or old and decaying, is not visible. Looking out to the sea and sky, it is possible to imagine a positive future for the children busy in the bright studios and workshops. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The main exhibition, currently, is themed to connect with T. S. Eliot’s poem <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Waste Land</i>. He worked on his creation while in the town, recuperating from a nervous disorder. In 1921, he sat in the ornate Edwardian shelter overlooking Nayland Rocks and wrote “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On Margate Sands / I can connect / Nothing with nothing.</i>” A bit like the Council, I thought, as I looked up at the wall of the adjacent bunker-like public toilets, where they had tacked the blue plaque commemorating the poet. How much more ugliness could they conceive in nine months?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6Tf_He55n9g/WqzV03GjFbI/AAAAAAAAAd0/MoKUOqWpRv8R43lHddVCLZ0KsWZs4-5CwCLcBGAs/s1600/20180313_122922.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6Tf_He55n9g/WqzV03GjFbI/AAAAAAAAAd0/MoKUOqWpRv8R43lHddVCLZ0KsWZs4-5CwCLcBGAs/s320/20180313_122922.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;"><br /></span></div><br />Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-21212290722546081722018-03-10T07:56:00.000+00:002018-03-10T07:56:50.580+00:00Painfully Obvious<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Today, March 8<sup>th</sup>, is International Women’s Day, the culmination of a series of events intended to keep the spotlight on the fight for the equality of the sexes. There was a symbolic IWD procession through town last Saturday and, although I toyed with the notion of joining it to demonstrate my solidarity, I decided not to on the grounds that a) I would have felt like an interloper and b) I have lately developed nasty pains in my upper feet.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Besides, I was set to go shopping for a new pillow. Three years ago another pain afflicted me, attacking my right shoulder while I was in bed. The doctor I consulted had no explanation to offer, other than to say that the shoulder is a very “complex” joint. He offered me a nasty-sounding injection of steroids to numb it temporarily but I opted instead for his suggestion that an orthopaedic pillow and some gentle exercises might help to settle it down. Eventually, the pain went because, I assume, of my assiduous exercise regime and determined use of a brick-like pillow acquired from Ikea. However, now the pain is back. I suspect that the pillow has outlived its efficacy and I am on a mission to find an alternative. The problem, as I was to discover, is that the panoply of pillows on offer is bewildering. They come in many shapes and thicknesses; there are different fillings – feathers, foam, memory foam, polyester, or anti-allergenic fibres; some are elaborately designed to support the neck; and there are options for back, front, or side-sleepers (but none for restless sleepers). In the end, I bought one that I thought might do the trick, though I have embarked, I am sure, on a series of trials that could take a while and involve several discarded pillows.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Meanwhile, the IWD movement gathers momentum for its cause – aided by revelations from high-profile figures in Hollywood and various other businesses. Men can no longer dismiss the sex-equality issue as ‘women’s lib’ nor make light in any other way of the oppression and discrimination many women still endure. The subject fills the media, culture, and the arts and, though I did not join their march, I am supporting the cultural side of things. I went to see Manchester Art Gallery’s retrospective show of Annie Swynnerton, the painter who in 1922 became the first woman to be admitted to the Royal Academy, 154 years after its inception. (It goes almost without saying that she was also a suffragist and a Mancunian.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Everywhere I look just now, there seems to be another story of women succeeding against the odds. It turns out that Hedy Lamarr was more than just a glamorous film star of the 1940s era: she was an inventor who, among other things, held a patent for the invention of a system to encrypt radio communications. I have just read the memoir of Daphne Phelps, an Englishwoman who moved, on her own, to Sicily in 1946, where she succeeded in rescuing a villa, despite her penniless state and the odds stacked against her by the ultra-patriarchal system.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">I finished the book just before taking my painful feet along to the doctor – a woman (I’m getting used to it) – and one I had not seen before. She prodded them to see whether she could make me wince. “Well,” she said, “the foot is very complex,” then, tactfully addressing my age, “It’s probably just wear and tear.” I had suspected it might be but was hoping, nonetheless, for a miracle cure. She offered Ibuprofen and, when I expressed reluctance to mask the problem with painkillers, suggested I could try putting moulded inserts into my shoes. I headed hopefully for the shops but was a little dismayed to find there are many different types of insert. I would like to think I have more important things to do...<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><br /></div><br />Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-26571242098066936702018-03-03T08:55:00.000+00:002018-03-03T08:55:55.320+00:00Social Heterogeneity<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Though it takes just five minutes, the walk from home to the gym can be quite eventful. Starting in China Town, it passes the ornamental symbolic gate, where I am often caught, inadvertently, in tourists’ photos; then past the ATM on the corner, where the regular beggars have learned not to accost me; thence around the back of the coach station, where travellers sometimes ask for directions to the front of the coach station; then across the main street in the gay village, where I dodge another beggar-cluster and – occasionally – hear a busker; then, finally, past a bar-cum-nightclub that sometimes hosts daytime events for specialised-interest groups, such as Furries, Goths, Transvestites or visiting Belgian football supporters. Last Sunday it was pug owners.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Approaching the bar, I had become aware that I was sharing the pavement with more than the usual number of dog-walkers. Strange, I thought. Stranger still, however, was the fact that the dogs were all of the same breed. Later, on my way home and with my curiosity unabated, I approached a man standing by the door of the bar who had custody of two of these dogs. I asked him what was happening. “Pugfest” was his curt reply. Seeing that I was none the wiser, he repeated it. “Pugfest,” and then, elaborating, “in ‘ere,” he said, cocking his (pug-like) head toward the doorway of the bar. I suppose he deemed it a waste of effort to explain to the uninitiated the purpose of a Pugfest, let alone why it should be held in a bar in the gay village but, since he was disinclined to engage further, I went on my way, stepping deftly over a trio of tiny turds on the pavement.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Later, however, I looked up pugs on the internet. What I discovered was intriguing. They are bred as lapdogs, a project which seems to have been successful in that they are small and deemed to be playful, charming, docile, clever and sociable. On the downside, however, they are prone to flatulence, which must be something of a disincentive to actually holding them on one’s lap. But perhaps the dogs manage to overcome any consequent embarrassment or unpleasantness by deploying one of the other traits attributed to them – a good sense of humour. So far, so amusing; but there is a seriously undesirable consequence of their breeding – the panoply of health problems inherited from and exaggerated by their small gene pool. I am indifferent to dogs (and suspicious of the notion of their ‘ownership’) and, though some people interpret my indifference as dislike, it is nothing of the sort. The absence of love does not imply the presence of hate. From a neutral stance then, it seems fair to ask whether the breeding of pugs constitutes cruelty, since their genetic manipulation disregards the creatures’ suffering in order to maximise their human entertainment-value.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">So, are pug-owners cruel people? Encounters like these, brief though they may be, highlight something that we know exists, yet do not necessarily or ordinarily engage with: social diversity. The walk to the gym takes me past people of various interests, beliefs, backgrounds and ambitions. Sometimes I speak to them. Sometimes I merely observe. Inevitably, I make value judgements about them. By the end of the walk, I am inclined to marvel that so many people, of so many different persuasions, can actually live together in relative harmony. Do we really have anything in common other than a degree of tolerance that keeps the peace? How do I respect the pug owner while pitying the pug? And if I were to stage a protest at the next Pugfest, would they set the dogs on me?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><br /><br />Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-45476014520027508632018-02-24T08:03:00.001+00:002018-02-24T08:10:23.989+00:00My Sporting Heritage<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Whenever I have attended a live sporting event, I have left the ground disappointed – if not early. Apart from one cricket match at Lords back in 1996, when a full-figured lady streaker ran across the pitch in my direction, nothing exciting has ever happened. Admittedly, I have attended very few events (not being a sports fan) and I may have been unlucky that they were all dull. Nevertheless, I am not prepared to kiss any more frogs – especially after last week’s rugby match between the <i>Sharks</i> and the <i>Saracens</i>, teams with names so misleadingly scintillating that they probably contravene the Trades Description Act.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Despite all this, I am partial to watching the occasional game of rugby on TV, thereby eliminating the inconveniences of driving and queuing, the inferior quality of refreshments, the high cost of tickets and – not least – the poor view of the action (supposing there is any). Perhaps the faint but lingering interest I have in the game is a legacy of my education at a boarding school in Plymouth, where participation was mandatory for all boys in possession of four functioning limbs. I was neither an accomplished nor enthusiastic player but I did have an uncle who played for Plymouth Albion. Let’s just put my attachment down to nostalgia, a feeling that has dominated the last few days especially, since I have been on a trip, with my partner, to Plymouth, the city I left in 1966 and have visited only rarely since.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">A lot has changed there – as one might expect. For one thing, the old school is gone, its land sold to developers long ago. This saved my partner from the ritual of having to go and see it although, in fairness, she was indulgent when listening to my commentary on other landmarks. These included places such as the outdoor pools where I swam as a child, the shelter on the prom where I first kissed a girl, the hall where I danced to Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps and the pub where I bought my first (illegal) pint. Her tolerance of my nostalgia was exemplary, though it may have been enhanced by the fact that the sun was shining and the feel-good factor was high. The city’s extensive and varied seafront, from the Mayflower Steps at the Barbican, westwards around the Hoe, to the former Royal Naval stronghold at Mount Wise, looked at its best. And there was decent espresso where once there had been only Nescafé; sourdough where once there was only Wonderloaf.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Since Elizabethan times, the local economy has been dominated by the Royal Navy but, now that the “Senior Service” is shrunk to a fraction of the size it used to be, some fundamental changes are manifest. Admiralty land and buildings have been sold off, enabling the development of housing where once the industrial/military complex hogged all the best sea-facing locations. Not that sea-facing locations mattered to me as a schoolboy: I was more impressed by the futuristic architecture of the city’s central area, re-fashioned in the 1950s after the war-time bombings. The wide boulevards, lined with the clean contemporary temples of retail, intersected by the broad Armada Way running south to the war monument on the Hoe, all seemed perfect to me. Nowadays the shops, having to adapt to new ways of doing business, are under strain and some of them are looking less than glamorous. Nevertheless, the original street-plan remains harmoniously intact and, as such, lives up to the confident, optimistic vision of the future that inspired it and that appealed so much to my youthful idealism.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Overall, with encouraging signs of a revival of economic fortune based on tourism and higher education, the old place certainly has a lot more to interest me than just nostalgia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-21623303696549574912018-02-17T08:34:00.000+00:002018-02-17T08:34:37.040+00:00Hazlet?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">One evening last week I was reading David Foster Wallace’s <i>Brief Interviews with Hideous Men</i> when, realising eventually that my power of concentration was no longer equal to the complexities of his imaginative and inventive prose, I gave up. I closed the book and picked up instead one that I had previously read and knew to be less taxing – Bill Bryson’s <i>Notes from a Small Island</i>. It’s an especially easy read for me because I have an affinity with the notion of travelling around Britain savouring the peculiarities of its varied parts. In fact, as it happened, I was due to set off the next morning on just such an expedition.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The destination was Barnard Castle, a classic market town on the upper reaches of the River Tees. I say classic because, like Appleby 30 miles to the west, its core is recognisably intact: it straddles a river, has a castle, a broad main street for the market stalls and numerous pubs, all of which are still trading. My visit did not coincide with market day but the shops compensated for that: many are owner-managed and are stocked therefore with local produce and specialities offered by friendly – sometimes eccentric – characters. Consequently, I am now the happy possessor of a hand-brush made of wood and bristle and a bag of small, brown, dried peas known as carlins which, although normally used as animal feed, are eaten by locals on a particular day in the ritual run-up to Easter. The brush will certainly find a purpose in the campervan but the carlins will probably remain in the back of a cupboard long after Easter has been and gone.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Dried peas apart, the food available in Castle Barnard is mouthwatering, especially for those who, like me, have a fondness for old-fashioned delicacies such as hazlet, pressed tongue, black pudding, pease pudding, faggots, pork pies, farmhouse cheese and artisan bread. With two butchers’ shops, three bakers and four grocers all on the same street, the ratio of outlets for fresh, locally sourced produce to density of population exceeds the wildest dreams of a foodie resident in central Manchester. I embarked on an orgy of stocking-up before we left the area, afraid that, if I did not support them, the shopkeepers would go out of business. I was mindful of the recent news headline that half of all the food now bought in Britain has been “processed” – which is to say that someone has added to it that which would be better left out i.e. sugar, palm oil, various chemicals and excessive quantities of salt and fat. This morning’s headlines were no surprise to me, therefore: the consumption of processed food contributes not only to obesity, but also the likelihood of contracting cancer. I hate to say “I told you so” but we hippies ( I was loosely associated) knew back in the day that ingesting food additives was unlikely to be good for one’s health, hence the popularity of our ‘fads’ such as brown rice, wholemeal bread, vegetarianism, macrobiotics etc. Not so much notice was taken of the medical advice concerning the ingestion of mind-bending chemicals, but no one is perfect. Nor did we hippies diet in vain: we sowed the seeds so that, alongside the rise of processed food, there is now a growing band of vegans determined to save the planet from excess, animals from harm and their digestive systems from contamination.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">But the excursion was not all about food. One day was devoted to a walk up and down Teesdale, following the fast-flowing river that attracts daring canoeists in helmets and rubber onesies. Another was spent following the river Wear through nearby Durham, where the water is slow and wide and competitive rowing is the preferred sport. Durham is rightly famous for its history, its cathedral, its castle and its university, the library of which is named for one of its ex-chancellors - Bill Bryson.</span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-14649908785742404082018-02-10T08:10:00.000+00:002018-02-10T08:10:18.455+00:00How Very Civilised<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">In 1969 the BBC aired its “landmark” 13-part series <i>Civilisation</i>. There was – and still is – controversy over the title, given that the scope of the programme was confined to an appreciation of a limited range of western art, though in fairness to the producers, its remit was qualified by the subtitle <i>A Personal View by Kenneth Clarke</i>. This week the BBC announced the imminent broadcast of a similar “landmark” series, the nine-part <i>Civilisations</i> (note the plural.) The stated focus of the series is on art and creativity, though I suspect that the underlying question of what constitutes the civilised will be in play throughout. If, however, we believe that civilisation started with cave paintings 40,000 years ago, then perhaps it makes sense to see art as an index of its development.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Wiser men than me have baulked at the prospect of trying to come up with a definitive description of what civilisation is, as their frequent recourse to humour on the subject seems to indicate. Oscar Wilde once quipped, “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation between” – though we should bear in mind that he died in 1900 and much has happened since. Others have come up with definitions that, notably, do not mention art. They include: Arnold Toynbee, “Civilisation is a movement and not a condition”; Samuel Johnson, “A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation”; H.G. Wells, “Civilisation is a race between disaster and education”; and Emile Zola, “Civilisation will not attain to its perfection until the last stone of the last church falls on the last priest”. And let us not forget Ghandi’s withering riposte when asked what he thought of western civilisation: “I think it would be a good idea.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The elusiveness of the essence of civilisation seemed to permeate two films that I saw this week. The first, <i>Makala</i>, a documentary about the life of a Congolese charcoal maker, was tough to watch. His precarious, hand-to-mouth existence – trying to earn a living by making and selling charcoal in a war-ravaged country that has no infrastructure and with no support outside of family – seemed unimaginable, though true. The very absence of civilisation was palpable. The second, <i>Phantom Threads</i>, portrays an opposite extreme – the life of a fashionable London couturier circa 1955. It’s a love story, ultimately, but the pampering environment in which it is set – all frocks, flounces and tantrums – led me to question whether this facet of civilisation is, in fact, civilised at all. Decadent seems more apt.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">However we might choose to define it, civilisation is always in the process of development, absorbing and incorporating diverse elements along the way – the more the better, for diversity builds resilience. Civilisations built on monocultures have all peaked and declined– Egyptian, Greek, Roman, to name a few. They were ousted by more powerful rivals, which suggests that more of the same would be futile in the long term. The sooner we get used to the idea of a global – but inclusive – civilisation, the better. That is why I was encouraged by other news this week. The village of Cheddar, which already punches above its weight in the fame stakes, has now come up with another knock-out. Eponymous Cheddar Man, a 10,000-year-old skeleton, has provided scientists with DNA that reveals his skin was black – or dark brown – and that he had blue eyes. People of white British ancestry alive today are his descendents, which means that the connection between Britishness and whiteness is a relatively recent phenomenon. There are probably some of us who may not like the idea, but to them I have to say “hard cheese.”</span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-11347998228928134372018-02-03T08:37:00.001+00:002018-02-03T08:37:38.825+00:00Come Rain, Come Shine<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">It was a gruesome start to the day. I had checked my phone for new messages and found attached to the first one an unappealing photo of a friend’s sore foot. The next, from my sister, was worse: a photo of a gory wound on her leg. I really should take heed of the latest advice – to limit screen time – at least until after breakfast. However, I recovered my equanimity and, the weather forecast being fine, set off for a walk. (Lately we have had daily variations in our weather: cold and bright; cold and overcast; or cold and wet. I prefer the first but don’t mind the other types because I have a strategy for making the best of them: indoor activities.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">This fine day, I took a walk around the northern fringe of the city centre, dodging the homeless people on the pavements, to check progress on the housing developments that might, one day, give them shelter. The good news is that there are plenty of units being built. Less good, however, is the prospect that they will not be cheap. Moreover, in the inevitable compromise between density and quality, density appears to have gained the upper hand. In the euphemistically named neighbourhood of Angel Meadows, for example, identikit blocks of flats crowd each other out as they loom over narrow Victorian streets. And, despite our acquired wisdom of the social value of creating inter-active neighbourhoods, there seems to be no provision for communal facilities or open spaces. But my walk was not completely soured by disappointment: further along, in the quarter called New Islington, the buildings are more varied and set to make the most of the old canal basins and the small but thoughtfully created park. There is hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Turning to indoor activities – apart from an excellent lunch hosted by a friend, which drifted boozily into the early evening – good chunks of my time were spent at the cinema. I went to see Nick Parks’ <i>Early Man</i>, despite it being a ‘family entertainment,’ because it is set “near Manchester, around lunchtime” in the Pleistocene era. Sure enough, there were actual children in the audience, though I doubt they got the metaphor about sustainable economic growth that the storyline conveyed (a primitive tribe is ousted from its habitat by the forces of profiteering capitalism). Actually, toward the end of the film, in spite of the gripping football match, small children started to wander the aisles in search of something more interesting, while adults sat rapt.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Again, despite misgivings, I then went to see <i>The Post</i>. I am reluctant to pay money to encourage Stephen Spielberg because, although his films are undeniably well made, they are invariably tainted with his trademark insertion of at least one unnecessary and extremely schmaltzy scene. However, the cinema beckoned, offering shelter from the elements, and the story of <i>The Post </i>– the fight for the freedom of the press – is a noble one and, worryingly, of recurring topicality. Everything was as expected – the film was well made, the actors were terrific and the schmaltzy scene came in on cue – but there was one thing about the story I had not previously realised: that the owner of the newspaper and, as such, the person who defied the President’s injunction, was a woman. In the light of this and other facts, it seems to me that now is a particularly good time to celebrate her principled stance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">100 years after women fought for and gained suffrage, 50 years since women at Ford’s Dagenham plant made a stand for equal pay, and amidst current revelations that gender pay inequality remains rife (lent force by the high-profile publicity afforded it by the BBC cases) it appears that there is a convergence of forces, like some rare astronomical event. Perhaps last night’s Blue Moon was an auspicious omen for gender equality; it’s a pity the sky was overcast and we all stayed indoors.</span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-91151347338161232262018-01-27T08:23:00.001+00:002018-01-27T08:23:35.141+00:00Future-Proofing<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">I was sitting at my customary table in the hotel across the road, sipping Sencha green tea. I had been challenged by the barista to try it instead of my usual cappuccino but, really, I was not being adventurous: I was procrastinating, indulging in displacement activity, avoiding getting to grips with some forward financial planning which prudence required yet indulgence abhorred. I had known for some time that there was work to be done on this project – research to be undertaken, decisions to be made, intentions to be implemented – but I was daunted by the detail and confounded by the complications. <i>Mañana</i> had become my mantra.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Reading the newspaper that morning, however, provided me with a call to action. The agglomeration of stories concerning the ills of our society seemed to be reaching a crescendo: prisoners committing suicide because of inhumane conditions in our jails; young men stabbing each other to death in our streets; the NHS crumbling under the weight of patients; the education system continuing to fail the poor. All of these problems – and more – ought to be addressed by tackling their causes rather than their symptoms. Yet national government is more inclined to focus on the 5-year election cycle than the long-term well-being of society and, in so doing, fails to implement policies that might minimise social ills in the future. Well, I thought, I had better get on with it, lest I become a burden on a state that has insufficiently provided for my future decrepitude. I drank up, went to my desk and fired up my computer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Just when you need it most, however, technology can let you down. The computer insisted on a “critical update” and, since I was aware of the recent scare over hackable processors, I allowed it to do its thing. During the process, however, complications arose that I lacked the competence to resolve and which, for the ensuing 24 hours, tied me up in finding someone who could: all of which prevented me from making progress on my project. Meanwhile, my attention drifted and I began to indulge in activities that are of questionable priority. I had previously been seduced by the notion of getting a new cover for my phone, the kind that incorporates little pockets for credit cards and a place for the nifty little flat reading specs I had recently purchased. My logic went thus: instead of the usual exit check of four items – wallet, phone, specs and keys – I could reduce it to just two. “What?” said my partner, “So now you could lose your wallet and phone together?” She had a point and. In the event, once I had the whole combo assembled, the package became so unwieldy that I am now considering reverting to carrying the items separately. &nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">I attempted a “restart” on my planning project a few days later but did not get very far. My partner phoned to tell me that she was stuck in the suburbs with a flat tyre and no time to sort it out because of meetings. I admit that I was not reluctant to go and fix it: first, it gave me a valid excuse to put off the dreaded project; second, it gave me an opportunity to show off – I may not know much about hard drives but at least I do know how to change a wheel. Alas, half a day later, I returned home a humiliated man. The release bolts for the spare wheel had corroded so badly I could not shift them and was obliged to call out the roadside rescue service.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">So now, with everything fixed, I am ready to set an example for government by getting started on some serious future-proofing. Just as soon as I have found the files, that is.</span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-36312093970812851322018-01-20T08:15:00.000+00:002018-01-20T08:15:06.725+00:00The Facts Of The Matter<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Researchers have recently revealed some surprising statistics: the percentage of England’s total landmass that has been “concreted over” (or built on), is a mere 2.27%. When asked to guess the figure, however, most people imagine it to be closer to 50%. The reason for our collective misconception could be that 80% of us actually live in urban environments so we see a lot of concrete every day. Notwithstanding that, I have just been to Lincolnshire, a county renowned for its vast, flat expanses of sparsely populated farmland. My brother-in-law, who has lived there all his life, was driving us across this landscape when I decided to ask him the question: “What percentage of England’s landmass has been built on?” He thought for a moment before replying, “I would say, about 60%.” Perception, it seems, outflanks reality – a lesson we need to re-learn constantly.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Later, I left Lincolnshire by a very small train from a quite big village and, while waiting on the station’s windswept platform, concluded that rural trains are used only by people who either cannot or will not drive the long distances between amenities. My theory was soon validated by interaction with the two other passengers waiting. One of them, a young man I had previously encountered and know to be mentally disturbed, is not licensed to drive. The other, a young woman who smiled and said hello, explained to me that she was travelling by train because her car was broken. She also told me a lot of other stuff: her occupation, her qualifications, where she lives, her boyfriend’s details, where he lives, where she was going, what her hopes were for the future etc. (A new car was on her list). I had thought, at first, she wanted just to pass the time in polite conversation while waiting for the train but, by the time it arrived, I was more than ready to wish her bon voyage and seek a seat on my own. There I pondered whether she was a genuinely open and friendly person, an unfortunate patient on prescribed happiness medication, or a plain, old-fashion speed-freak.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">At the next stop, she disembarked (to meet her mother, who was leaving work early so they could go shopping together...) and my thoughts were distracted by a newcomer to the carriage – a transvestite. I was a little surprised: I am used to seeing transvestites in the city but assume they are rarer on rural public transport. It would have been interesting to find out more about this person but, unfortunately, they reeked so badly of urine that the voluntary proximity which might have led to a conversation was out of the question. Instead, I opened the window and resorted to speculation until we reached the mainline station and I transferred to the London train.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">In London, the 50% estimate seems very low – even allowing for the gardens and parks that compensate for the concrete. But I had little time for statistical evaluation: mine was a brief visit, though it did include a visit to Tate Britain to see Rachel Whiteread’s sculptures. I have long been intrigued by her work – solid castings of the spaces inside buildings and underneath objects such as chairs – though seeing so much of it in one place did break the spell. I liked more her project of placing castings of garden sheds in the great outdoors, where they seem to sit well in their ramshackle glory. I do have reservations about the one in the Mojave Desert, however. What if some desperate, lost wanderer should spy it from a distance and mistake it for shelter? The last thing they would want to see would be an art installation that confounds reality with perception.</span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-68618696010008613352018-01-13T08:34:00.002+00:002018-01-13T08:34:29.375+00:00Elvis Presley's Legacy<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Recently, I stayed a couple of nights at an hotel where, at the breakfast buffet, I opted for a childhood favourite that I had not indulged in for some time – hard-boiled eggs. Unfortunately, I discovered I had lost the knack of peeling them (insofar as a brittle, rigid skin can be peeled) and small fragments of shell subsequently turned up in my tea, on my toast and up my sleeve. Later, I thought to look up egg-peeling techniques using my phone and, although the results were enlightening, they were also impractical for a hotel dining room, as they involved either adding something to the water during the boiling or plunging the cooked eggs in cold water and shaking them about. Nevertheless, I am delighted that folksy household tips such as these are now accessible universally and that I no longer need my ancient copy of Mrs Beeton, which I don’t always have handy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Bearing in mind this acquired dependence on the phone and knowing that my ageing Windows device – which even Microsoft has now forsaken – is no longer up to the job, this week I bought an Android-powered replacement. Of course, I had anticipated that the migration from one system to another might be bothersome so I did some elementary research beforehand. “No problem,” was the invariable answer from those I canvassed and, for the most part, that turned out to be true, though familiarising myself with the new system has taken a little time. (Software can be intuitive but it depends on your starting point: if you have ever questioned why older people stare so fixedly at their screens, the reason could be bafflement.) Still, as they say, “no pain, no gain” and, to be fair to Android, the system seems to work well, except for one problem – migrating a particular Microsoft Oultook account, which has necessitated my reading a lot of difficult-to follow ‘knowledge-base’ articles and, eventually, contacting Microsoft help-lines.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;">I have to say that I feel sorry for people on the other end of help-lines: a lot of their time must be spent dealing not so much with customers’ technical issues as with their ignorance and frustration, as I can attest. They certainly deserve respect for maintaining their civility, though not all of them have the degree of patience required for the job. One exchange I experienced turned sour when the operator clearly implied that I should simply follow her instructions, stop asking awkward questions and – especially – stop making helpful suggestions. The fact that I had spent hours discussing the issue with her colleagues and had been elevated to this third level of technical assistance did not, in her view, entitle me to have an opinion on either the cause or the resolution of the problem. I felt quite relieved – and a little smug – when she gave up and passed me on to a fourth-level expert who quickly pinned it down. He admitted, apologetically, that the two systems are not fully compatible and that the problem is, therefore, insoluble. Now, I thought, I can get some sleep.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">Or at least I could have done, but for the fact that, outside in the street, someone was whistling a tune. It was familiar but the words and title eluded me until the third chorus, when I realised it was Elvis Presley’s </span><i style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">Wooden Heart</i><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">. From my window, I could see the perpetrator, a man of about 60, standing on the street corner. His whistling was of professional standard but he was not busking – he had no collection bowl – and appeared to be just passing the time. He began another tune that, again, was familiar but elusive. I reached for my new phone to see if it had an app that recognises whistled tunes but I was too slow: he began to wander nonchalantly away from my view and out of earshot, leaving me fretting about the allure of artificial intelligence and the fading memory of that melody.</span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-12593576086793741562018-01-06T08:12:00.001+00:002018-01-06T08:12:35.964+00:00Euro-lingering<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Yesterday morning we had coffee at a local café on the edge of the small harbour at Syracuse. The turquoise, mirror-calm Med sparkled in the warm, winter sunshine and hypnotised us into lingering for longer than usual – to the point, in fact, where lingering became malingering (a habit that one can observe in a certain sector of the local male population). By the time we finally left, I was feeling so dozy that I forgot to pay. When, later in the day, I realised this and returned to settle the account, a different barista – one who spoke no English – was on duty and, in order to explain myself, I had to look up the verb “I forgot”: it translates as <i>ho dimenticato</i>, which sounds uncomfortably like an admission of dementia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">This instance of the shared roots of language (in this case, Latin) illustrates just one of the things that make me feel at home in Europe and frustrated by the Brexiteers’ determination to distance us from it: our cultures are more homogenous and our histories more intertwined than many a Little Englander would care to admit. That which appears to them ‘foreign’ is merely a variation of an over-arching theme – and Sicily is a good place to get a sense of this. Linguistic similarities apart, the sense of shared history is evident in many of its buildings. The Cathedral of Syracuse, for example, incorporates the original Doric columns of the Greek temple that preceded it. They look familiar, which is not surprising since Greek classical architecture was widely imitated in Britain and elsewhere. These particular columns, however, are 2500 year-old originals that have served Pagans, Christians, Moslems, Byzantines, and then Christians again. They are visible proof that Sicilians were not always Italian – any more than Britons were always British. They are also a reminder that the incumbent Roman Catholic Church is a relative newcomer to the worshiping business.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Syracuse around 400 BC was not only Greek but also just as prosperous as Athens and, by way of demonstration, the authorities built a huge theatre. It was hewn out of a rocky hillside, had a seating capacity of 16,000, is known to have staged the last tragedies of Aeschylus and is still in use as a setting for theatrical productions today. However, stage drama is not to everyone’s taste and, when the Romans took over the place 600 years later, they made alterations to the performance area so as to accommodate their more plebeian entertainments i.e. gladiatorial events. &nbsp;As it turned out, that was a good move: re-purposing is a practical and economic use of resources that saved it – and many other historic edifices – from obliteration.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The centres of Sicily’s old towns are stuffed with historically interesting houses and palazzi that are barely standing, but the economics of rescue are difficult to resolve and they may all fall down eventually. Elsewhere, however, buildings of another sort are being re-purposed. In Catania, a 20<sup>th</sup> century sulphur factory has been converted to house workspaces and several small-scale museums, one of which, the Museum of the Cinema, I went to visit. I would like to report that the museum is a rip-roaring success, that it is stuffed with valuable memorabilia and that the interactive displays are ingenious, engaging and all in working order; but, unfortunately, I cannot. Which is not to say it is devoid of interest or charm: the old publicity posters are nostalgic and the period room-sets – especially Don Corleone’s study – are eerily evocative. More importantly, however, the project is an imaginative attempt to preserve the region’s heritage that, without support from the EU, would not have happened. Every region’s past deserves recognition for its contribution to present European culture: and that’s one thing I won’t forget.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-5528167195961137452017-12-30T06:52:00.000+00:002017-12-30T06:53:43.579+00:00Coffee, Campari and Cash<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">We were packing up to leave our apartment in Palermo when the sound of a brass band, crisp and tight, wafted in through the shutters with the morning sunbeams. Down in the narrow streets, an itinerant band of around a dozen smartly uniformed musicians were playing seasonal tunes in what I imagined to be a personal sending-off ceremony. But it was a fond imagining and, besides, we didn’t want to leave. A week in Palermo is barely enough to visit all the sites of historical interest, especially when numerous coffee and/or Campari breaks are factored in to the schedule.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">I have not yet adopted the Italian way of standing at the bar to knock back espresso, preferring to sit comfortably and savour cappuccino. Nor have I the fondness for sweet pasticceri that seem to be a national obsession though I was persuaded, on one occasion, to try a little specialita, a cake filled with ricotta. I imagined it would taste of cheese but, in fact, it was so heavily laced with sugar that I had to put it aside and order more coffee to cleanse my palate. I have since noticed that ricotta – a versatile substance – is used universally in all manner of recipes. I suspect it even comprises the main component in the stucco that is applied to most building exteriors – which would explain why it is always falling off.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">There are many grand historic buildings in Palermo, so many that it is evidently quite a job to utilise and maintain them all: even some of the enormous churches are closed up. As for the abandoned palazzi built by wealthy families in years gone by, private enterprise has stepped into a few, converting them to hotels, while others await their fate. One of them, Palazzo Mori, remains fully furnished and open to the paying public, in the manner of a British National Trust project, though it is apparently under-funded and could do with a little State aid. But, as an Italian acquaintance once told me, “Italy is a poor country, full of wealthy people” and so it falls to the EU to step in and re-distribute some of its massive wealth to the poorer regions on its fringes. (Wales, Cornwall and other deprived parts of the UK, eat your heart out.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The museums and galleries that we have visited bear the EU plaques that tell where the money for their establishment came from, as well as those other hallmarks of kick-starter funding – lavish and perfectly executed renovations, staffed by disinterested jobsworths for whom there is no on-going revenue to pay for training. One exception to this was the Galleria d’Arte Moderne, where there is a shop, a cafe and – unusually – a card payment facility. Elsewhere, the typical experience is that admission fees have to be paid in cash – whether or not credit card logos are displayed – and, mysteriously, there is never any change. Payment in cash is a practice so alien now to daily life at home, that I am out of the habit. Nevertheless, even I can work out that if cash is common currency, change should be readily available.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">We may go back to Palermo, though it won’t be to look at any more grim paintings of religious devotion and suffering: there is no joy that I can detect in that art form. The glittering gold mosaic interiors of the Palatine Chapel and La Matorana, however, are an exception: they tell the same religious story in an exuberant and visually stimulating fashion that transcends the misery. For now, however, we are in Syracuse, having driven through the mountains on the futuristic autostrada-on-stilts (part-funded by the EU). Our host ushered us into our rental apartment and presented us with a welcome gift – a ricotta cake large enough for a family gathering. “Thank you so much,” I said. “We look forward to eating it later.”&nbsp;</span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-16081854994925665592017-12-23T06:48:00.001+00:002017-12-23T06:48:25.238+00:00Club Rules? What Club Rules?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">The ruling party in Poland – the shamelessly named Freedom and Justice Party – is in the process of curtailing both freedom and justice by politicising the country’s judiciary and taking other steps to ensure it gets re-elected, such as silencing dissenters and attempting to control the country’s electoral commission. Listening to this on the news at breakfast, I was already choking on my toast when a British Conservative politician popped up to defend the Polish government with platitudes such as “important trading partner”, “local democracy” and “taking back control”. He sidestepped the real issue – that yet another national government is taking those first steps along the road to totalitarianism – with such blatant disregard that he must think we are uncomprehending idiots; which, to be fair to him, many of us are. Nevertheless, the plain fact is that nobbling one’s judiciary is wrong. It is also against the rules of the EU, of which Poland is a member, yet its government presses ahead, outraged that the EU should presume to have a say in the matter.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">We have spent this last week in Sicily where, because my Italian is so rudimentary, I can detect no discussion of EU politics except by tuning in to BBC Radio 4 via the internet. To be honest, however, I am not presently all-consumed by the issues, since we are here mainly to savour the food, drink and history of the island. In order to cover as much ground as possible, we hired a car, pre-dented so as not to draw attention to ourselves, and fitted with a sat-nav to de-stress the experience of driving through unfamiliar, sprawling towns. Unfortunately, the hire firm did not alert us to the fact that the sat-nav was programmed in Italian and knew only one destination – The Vatican. Maybe it’s a joke they inflict on tourists, but I had to execute a factory re-set to get the device to recognise the rest of Italy. As for getting it to speak English, we chose the voice of an Australian called Ken who has a ‘sense of humour’ and a vocabulary to match, in preference to Janet from the Home Counties, whose po-faced delivery is somehow at odds with the unruly traffic hereabouts.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Arriving in Catania and, later, Palermo, we were relieved to park the car and walk. Historic city-centres such as these were not built for cars, but the locals who live in them have little choice but to squeeze their minis through the streets and thread their teetering motorbikes around the pedestrians, which they do with consummate skill and consideration for each other. Road rage is reserved only for other drivers, in particular those who dare to proceed more slowly than the permitted norm, i.e. ‘full speed ahead’ at all times.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Ancient city centres may be frustrating for drivers, but they are otherwise the saviour of a way of life that does not work elsewhere. The historic centre of Palermo, for example, has four areas of street markets, operating all day, every day and sustained by the population that lives immediately above and around them. Everything they need for everyday life is there and, with competition intense, prices are keen. At least they are for the locals: they can see us coming, so we have learned to buy only from the stalls with clearly marked pricing. And, away from the markets, many of the streets are dedicated to individual trades, as they used to be in medieval London. One afternoon we walked past a line of jewellers, then coffin-makers, then – surprisingly – underpants wholesalers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">Walking the streets during rush hour is less of a pleasure: the fumes from all those ill-maintained, bashed-up vehicles are overpowering. Still, with the traffic jammed-up, there is an opportunity to count the number of drivers wearing seat belts: one in ten is average, despite the fact that, under EU rules, it is mandatory for everybody to belt up. The Poles, it seems, are not the only ones flouting the club rules.</span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-24248334838937775892017-12-16T07:08:00.000+00:002017-12-16T07:08:26.399+00:00Feeling The Pressure?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">Last Sunday I attended two musical concerts themed for Christmas, one of them performed by a big band, the other by a gospel choir with orchestral accompaniment. It was a good way to appreciate the huge repertoire of Christmas tunes – from the intensely sacred to the profoundly secular. It was also, incidentally, a chance to admire the variety of personal adornments worn by many as an expression of their enthusiasm for the festive season. I am talking of Santa hats, elf caps, antlers, Christmas jumpers and the like. These accessories, seen dispassionately, look ridiculous on anyone, but are nonetheless a light-hearted expression of the party atmosphere at this time of year. It strikes me, however, that there is a darker aspect to them – and to the jumpers in particular.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">Christmas jumpers make me feel – jumpy. Their designs shout the message “Christmas is fun!” and defy anyone to disagree. It seems to me that those who sport them are throwing down a challenge to join in, get knitwear-competitive or else face being ostracised and condemned as a spoilsport, sour-faced misery-guts. The thing is that, while I can appreciate the ironic humour, the intentional tackiness and/or the naive enthusiasm of some of the designs, I see them all as endorsing the underlying vision of Christmas as a prolonged period of over-indulgence. If I like Christmas at all, it is the version remembered from my youth – a visit to midnight mass and a couple of days of treats and family togetherness – not the present-day orgy of consumerism, encouraged and sustained by the retail and credit industries intent on testing the season of goodwill to the deepest recesses of our pockets. Therefore when I came across a chap this week wearing a seriously anti-Christmas jumper I congratulated him. Admittedly, he was not at much risk of being derided, since he was selling cinema tickets at the local arthouse, a place that teems with liberals and free-thinkers: but his protest was no less noble for that. Besides, it may be that he wore it prominently on the tram, travelling home with the shoppers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">I’ve bought quite a few cinema tickets lately, being eager to keep abreast of the new releases prior to leaving the country for a prolonged and determined spell of Christmas-avoidance. I enjoyed all of them, including two that appeared to have typos in the titles: <i>Happy End</i>, which I thought lacked the gerundive -<i>ing</i>, and <i>Good Time</i>, which seemed to cry out for the plural. Not everyone will agree that these titles are grammatically unexpected; however, they are misleading concerning their respective plots, which are, in fact, so full of mishaps and bad behaviour that both films could be described as “disaster movies” – if only that term had not been appropriated previously by the Hollywood blockbuster industry. Another film – James Franco’s<i> The Disaster Movie</i> – also has a misleading title, since it is not about earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or dystopian outcomes of any sort. In fact, it tells the true story of the making of a movie that was so bad it failed to attract an audience.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif;">Finally, there was <i>Menache</i>, the story of a widower stuck in a low-paying job and doing his best to bring up his adolescent son – a difficult situation. His real predicament, however, is defined by the fact that, being a member of a religious community governed strictly by its traditions, there is pressure on him to conform to the rules: he must either get a new wife or allow his son to be brought up by relatives. The widower wants neither option and argues the case for keeping his son, knowing all along that the system is adamant. His dilemma is serious – the real-life equivalent of, say, accepting that one’s choice is not whether to wear a Christmas jumper, but which design to choose.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><br /></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-26746229015909718442017-12-11T18:20:00.000+00:002017-12-11T18:20:43.984+00:00@percywyndhamlewis<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">This week I went to see an exhibition of work by Percy Wyndham Lewis, a man described by some as a genius on account of his radical writings and paintings. Apparently he did not like the name Percy and tried to shake it off – perhaps its poetic association did not fit with his self-image as the hard-man of contemporary artistic ideology. However, he certainly had no image problem in the physiognomy department: judging by contemporary descriptions and the various images of him, he was a handsome, fierce-looking young man – the sort one could imagine as fearless in the promotion of his principles. I was shocked, therefore, to see him interviewed on film in 1938, at the age of 56, looking jowly and rotten of tooth, sporting gratuitous arty accessories – a Sherlock pipe, a superfluous scarf, a ridiculous hat and ‘statement’ spectacles. Even though the look may have been ‘on-trend’ for artists at that time, the perils of image-management are clear: get it wrong and you can look more pillock than genius.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Wyndham Lewis lived at a time when very few people had a visible public persona to consider, but these days, thanks to free, internet-enabled social media, everybody can have one – considered or otherwise. This phenomenon impinged on me recently when I was recruited to write some short pieces for an online travel guide, </span><a href="http://www.spottedbylocals.com/manchester/author/joeholdsworth/"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Spotted by Locals</span></a><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">. Before proceeding, however, the publisher required of me a mug shot and a potted biography – presumably so that would-be readers might judge the credibility of my recommendations in the context of my perceived identity. Fair enough – but, without a professional PR consultant acting on my behalf, I had choices to make. In the end, I submitted a photo of myself in jovial mode and, for the biography, made light of my lifetime of experience and accumulated wisdom. I wanted to ensure I would not be mistaken for a polemicist with a grudge-fuelled agenda. Percy, I’m certain, would have taken me for a wimp, but tourists, after all, just want to know where to get a decent lunch.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">There was yet another aspect to the writing gig that I had not considered: the requirement to tweet in order to promote the publication. I knew in theory how the medium works, but had not mastered the practicalities and, unlike Mr. Trump, was nervous of tweeting the wrong thing to the wrong people. Hesitantly, I dusted off my dormant Twitter account and dipped my toe into the shark-infested waters. I was encouraged by an early success when I picked up a tweet from a chap who had a spare ticket to a sold-out gig that I was keen to attend (</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1OQrI1oUV8"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Jacob Collier</span></a><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">– highly recommended). We concluded the deal by phone, as I very soon lost the thread, but I have since become more familiar with the technique – which I do &nbsp;<i>not</i> &nbsp;find intuitive – and am working to increase the number of my followers into double digits (@joeholdsworth47, in case you are interested). My relative success with Twitter, however, is only part of the act. Next, I have to refine my presence on Instagram.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">Professional marketeers consider these digital self-publicity tools essential to raising the profile of any brand, although I suspect there is a limit to the public’s tolerance of such constant bombardment. Nevertheless, I bet Percy (I know, I can’t resist teasing him) would have loved and made full use of them. He was commercially unfortunate, in that he had few exhibitions, struggled to find eager publishers and had two World Wars interrupt his career. He made very little money from his limited audience, but a marketing campaign which co-ordinated his Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts could have done wonders for the monetisation of his output – though in his later years he would have been well advised to hire a personal stylist.</span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768837596065776364.post-18163207189207551572017-12-01T20:51:00.002+00:002017-12-02T07:53:23.816+00:00The Intrepid Culture Vulture<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Hands up all those who know Modigliani’s first name. I’m sure many of you do, but the point is that the style is so recognisable that he/she no longer has need of a first name. In the commercial world such a degree of recognition would be regarded as successful branding, but in the sphere of creative arts that term is probably too crass to be acceptable – assuming, that is, that the artist’s adoption of a unique style is not a cynical marketing ploy but a result of genuinely artistic exploration. In any case, being in London for a few days, I wanted to take advantage of some of the cultural goodies on offer, and the Modigliani exhibition at Tate Modern was one of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">Some of his (Amedeo’s) works are so familiar that I assumed I knew what to expect, but I was surprised by something I had not previously noticed: many of his faces have no eyeballs. I became obsessed with this for a while, thinking it odd that an artist could disregard the “windows to the soul” yet still convey soulfulness. Eventually I made the connection between the paintings and his earlier sculptures – stylised stone busts with blank eyeballs – and the fact that artists have never really needed to treat eyeballs – or anything else – realistically in order to express the subtleties of human experience. Perhaps I should scrutinise art more closely in future, I thought, and by the time I got to the Courtauld Gallery to see Chaim (I really did not know his first name) Soutine’s portraits, my attention was focused a little too intently on his treatment of the eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">However, my cultural outings included more than painting: I popped into the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road, attracted by a morbid curiosity to see the exhibition of medical paraphernalia and the special display <i>Ayurvedic Man</i> comprising Oriental medicinal tracts, artefacts and illustrations acquired by Mr. Wellcome at the turn of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. There, I expected merely to be amused by the trappings and mumbo-jumbo of faith-based cures devoid of empirical proof of efficacy and, to some extent, that was my experience. However, as well as the snake oil, there were long-standing traditions of plant-based remedies which, considering modern drugs are similarly derived, have to be convincing. Moreover, there was an 18<sup>th</sup> century engraving of a patient with a new nose, evidence that Indians had by then mastered reconstructive surgery, having reportedly practised it for hundreds of years. I stood corrected, once more, on my preconceptions – though not convinced that I need to realign or cleanse my chakras.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;sans-serif&quot;;">And so to music – or, rather, to Wilton’s in the East End, the 1850’s Music Hall that has been rescued from oblivion in the nick of time. Any excuse to attend this charming and evocative venue should be grasped so, when encouraged to meet a small party of friends and relatives there, I bought a ticket for an event titled <i>The Voice of the Violin</i> – despite my aversion to the instrument. (I secretly hoped that the unique acoustic of the venue might flatter its sound.) The programme was ambitious: it comprised 18 pieces for solo violin, each of which was played on an instrument contemporary to the era of its composition. In the event, despite the unquestionable virtuosity of the performer, I did find the concert quite testing. The experience was rather like listening to a collection of emblematic guitar solos taken out of the context of the tunes they were intended to enhance. Not only was the prolonged jumble of showy, over-excited pieces too much for my senses, but my hopes for acoustic enhancement went unrealised and I was quietly relieved when it ground to an end. Some prejudices, it seems, are insurmountable.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></div>Joe Holdsworthhttps://plus.google.com/115414961100390326802noreply@blogger.com0